Advancing Newbies - Next 2 Step suggestions?

Any suggestion for how to proceed. Myself and 13 year old son, We've been playing electric guitar for a few months now. He's mostly doing Rocksmith – up to International Support level and has 'mastered' about 5 of the songs. For a newbie I'm amazed how he has come along. (I'm of similar standard – but more old school – I'll actually go off and do a few scales and things as well)

Rocksmith has kept my son and myself interested and having fun with the guitar.

Any suggestions on songs / music we could do together. We both have separate practice amps. I am keen that he learns how to play in a band. I'm happy to play backing chord that he can do lead over.

We have done multiplayer on Rocksmith – kinda cool but really your more playing (or competing) in parallel rather than playing with someone. Hence the request for suggestions what a couple of advancing beginners can do.

(Eventually I think he wants to be good enough to jam with his mates from school but for now I want to get his confidence and skills up to this.) As for me I just get a buzz out of playing power chords (and staying just ahead of my son on Rocksmith!)

Fav music at present seems to be Muse - Unnatural Selection. “Its just fun to play”

If money permits.. I bet you guys could take real lessons together.. help eachother out when getting stumped. That is cool your doing that with him.. mine pretty much never wanted anything to do with me

Ha! May be a couple of weeks away this one - although some bits aren't too fast - just lots of screaming cats that will drive the neighbours mad!!!

However Megadeth - She Wolf will be fun. - this one will merely annoy the neighbours up to a couple of blocks away (not really, but we can only dream... Its usually my boys telling me to turn the volume down. )

I'm genuinely intrigued by this, I'm an experienced player and recently picked up Rocksmith. I'm definitely having fun with it but I'm can see a few glaring flaws that leave me unconvinced about it's ability to actually teach you how to play the guitar, as opposed to how to play Rocksmith.

As far as playing without Rocksmith goes how is your son doing? Is he still fine playing or does he find it harder without the screen? That was one thing that concerned me, the fact that it's more focussed on teaching you to react to visual cues rather than really understnading the instrument and helping you develop your ear along with technical ability.

Away from rocksmith some AC/DC stuff is as good a place to start as any if you're looking for straightforward stuff for two guitars, KISS songs are pretty easy too - or go further back and learn a simple blues or rock n roll song like Black Magic Woman or Johnny B Goode

That was one thing that concerned me, the fact that it's more focussed on teaching you to react to visual cues rather than really understanding the instrument and helping you develop your ear along with technical ability.

This would also be my concern, although I also feel a similar concern for people who are taught with certain methods that get them to pretty much sightread their way through music.

Both are responding to visual cues, instead of auditory ones. I guess ideally you should have both...

I'm genuinely intrigued by this, I'm an experienced player and recently picked up Rocksmith. I'm definitely having fun with it but I'm can see a few glaring flaws that leave me unconvinced about it's ability to actually teach you how to play the guitar, as opposed to how to play Rocksmith.

As far as playing without Rocksmith goes how is your son doing? Is he still fine playing or does he find it harder without the screen? That was one thing that concerned me, the fact that it's more focussed on teaching you to react to visual cues rather than really understnading the instrument and helping you develop your ear along with technical ability.

Away from rocksmith some AC/DC stuff is as good a place to start as any if you're looking for straightforward stuff for two guitars, KISS songs are pretty easy too - or go further back and learn a simple blues or rock n roll song like Black Magic Woman or Johnny B Goode

Rocksmith certainly isn't perfect. Being a game its very easy to discount it as being frivolous, but: It teaches you that playing the guitar is about making music and having fun.It does guide you through all the basic and some intermediate/advanced skills eg harmonics. If you are working on a certain skill the guitarcade section is great for practising. It gives immediate feedback on how well you are performing the various skills.It teaches you to practice bits you can't yet do. Until you can. It exposes you to lots of musical genres that ordinarily you may not bother with. When playing these I have been surprised by some of the detail in them that I had not appreciated up to now. And why some songs I still don''t like especially after playing them given the dissonance and disconnect with the themes – no names here but then again I'm not into Jazz either)

We had been working through a beginners book together, but Silent Night and Scarborough Fair just weren't his (or my) cup of tea. Give him respect though he did play them all through at least once. (Silent night with the distortion / gain turned up had us both laughing and the neighbours cringing – talk about theme disconnect...)

With regard to visual cues – this is an interesting comment. I have a little classical training and to a certain extent its not much different to looking at a piece of sheet music. Interesting when he (and I) know a section well we will take our eyes off the screen and just play the notes listening to the rhythm of the song. That's fun in performance mode checking out the avatar crowd. Also as you play you tend to play the note at the correct rhythm audio moment and not regard the visual cue of when the trigger block hits the staff. The visual cue is more to signal which note to play. And certainly on the faster bits you have to play by ear and rhythm.

Off Rocksmith, my son often has his guitar out just picking riffs. He has worked out by ear Skrillex – Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites, and some other songs that are too trendy for me to know.

When we do some improvising he is very patient and is able to lay a riff or two over the top of my 3 chord tricks or 12 bar blues sequence of power chords.

So essentially the Rocksmith has kept him playing and having fun rather than just playing half a dozen simple riffs forever.

Rocksmith does not teach any quality of technique – I notice his style is a little 'loose' when he is playing some of the more challenging stuff, but perhaps this is not too bad. He has good hand and body position (suggested in Rocksmith and our beginner's book) And his tone is pretty good – but then again I'm a proud, biased Dad!

Apart from hanging out with a group of similar standard mates and gradually increasing your repertoire I'm note sure you could advance so quickly in such a fun way.

For me as a re-beginner adult – I am working on basic skills – scales etc, and learning a few simple classical pieces and then I'll play Rocksmith for relaxation – but to be honest it too has improved my overall skills as well. Each day I do about an hour of 'normal' practice and about an hour on Rocksmith. So I never get bored and the variety – acoustic, electric classical mix is cool. I don't think I would bother doing the extra hour if it weren't for Rocksmith.

Woa that was a long reply

and specifically the music suggestions

AC/DC gets lots of street cred in Australia so will pursue that definitely. In fact I think he does a few of their riffs already so that will surprise him if I come out with a couple ACDC songs ready to go.The KISS glam rock thing does my head in – I understand these guys are great musicians but I never got into their stuff being put off by the stage show. However will give them a second look

Muse, Evanescance, Velvet revolver, Green Day, Fountains of Wayne, and I just love the song by Seether - Fake it. I aim to work on an acoustic version of this to play at some drunken BBQ to shock the posh buggers that annoy me.

Any suggestion will be very welcome.

Writing this list I realise I am thinking about the entire song/sound and not about two guitars playing together. Your comment about Thin Lizzy made me think about this. Your experience, advice and suggestions are thus much appreciated

The video is just to show that a video game really can have amazing results. As a kid I certainly would not have been able to play like this after just a few months.

He has friends who have done 6 months of guitar lessons at school who are not as good as this. And have not had a much fun. However maybe he would now benefit from some instruction to ensure he has good technique.

The cost is another matter too. Rocksmith $100 or less all up. Guitar teacher $40 - $50 a week maybe... I respect what guitar teachers offer to those who want it, but for a fun hobby it can be expensive.

However, his picking technique is extremely poor (using elbow, not wrist), his fretting hand is still obviously very weak (some of the notes he's playing sound out of tune because he isn't applying enough pressure and may be bending the string up or down accidentally), he isn't using his pinky finger at all, he has no vibrato which makes his playing sound stiff, etc.

Without getting a teacher or at least a solid practice regimen that actually highlights these issues with fundamental technique and tone, your son will end up learning to play guitar badly, and then it will be much harder for him to improve because he will have to un-learn everything he was doing wrong.

This is exactly the point where I would tell him to stop using the game for practice and move on to a teacher, or at least get some lessons online that scrutinize his fundamentals, because otherwise his progress will plateau very quickly.

I'm going to echo the sentiment of the others - it's great to see your son's progress in such a short amount of time, but it's fairly obvious to anyone who plays guitar and uses the correct technique, that your son is learning a lot of poor technique. Others have already mentioned some of the things he's doing. I also noticed he's not using his pinky. I would seriously recommend you find him a good instructor and pay for some lessons. Caught early enough, you can reverse some of these bad habits. If you don't fix them now, as others have said, he will plateau quickly and wonder why he can't get any better.

I think it's funny the way some people seem to feel threatened by Rocksmith. Sure, it would be foolish to use Rocksmith as the only learning tool. But it would also be foolish to expect most teachers to get students playing that at 3 months.

Maybe all the people I know who've had lessons just didn't have great teachers, but I know people who've had years of lessons who couldn't even play that. I've never had an actual lesson myself, though I've picked the brains of several instructors I've known. I found some with very limited knowledge of vibrato, others that didn't know about alternate picking, and some that had never even heard of pinch harmonics.

- Teachers alone aren't a panacea. Some are better than others, and I won't get into all the other limitations, but none of them will have the kind of contact time with the student you get with Rocksmith.- Self-study alone isn't a panacea. It can take a lot long time to pick everything up, it's difficult to objectively critique your own technique, and it takes more self discipline and motivation than most people have.- Rocksmith alone isn't a panacea. It only even tries to teach some of the fundamentals. It leaves out basics like vibrato, staccato, and dead notes, and provides misleading instruction on tremolo picking (to name a few). It has a video game-oriented interface, which is clunky and inefficient for learning. It communicates what to play through an imprecise construct; it IDs which string and fret to play and sometimes indicates how long to sustain the note, but doesn't display rhythmic values (e.g., quarter note, eighth, sixteenth). It doesn't give any clues as to when to pick down or up. It doesn't have any way to switch on/off or adjust effects on the fly, and it totally ignores tracks in the originals that use them (e.g., Whammy/POG on Icky Thump, and FuzzFactory/others on the Muse songs). It does, however do more than show you what to play; it tells you whether you played the right notes with the right timing (to a degree), even if it skips vibrato and how much to bend the strings or how fast to tremolo pick.

TS should definitely augment his son's training ASAP with either a formal teacher, or at least someone outside the family who can nip the bad habits in the bud and lay down the fundamentals that Rocksmith glosses over. It's rare for kids to have the time, the inclination, and/or the ability to be able to do this on their own effectively.

I think it's funny the way some people seem to feel threatened by Rocksmith. Sure, it would be foolish to use Rocksmith as the only learning tool. But it would also be foolish to expect most teachers to get students playing that at 3 months.

While that's a valid point, I'll also make the observation that it's the only thing he can play and if I played a chord progression on my guitar and asked him to play lead, he couldn't. In other words, he's learned to play something he saw on the screen - and play it well, but it's all he knows. Ask him to identify the note G on all 6 strings and he couldn't do it. Ask him to play a B pentatonic minor scale and he couldn't do it. Ask him to play an F# power chord and I doubt he could do it.

Any suggestions on songs / music we could do together. We both have separate practice amps. I am keen that he learns how to play in a band. I'm happy to play backing chord that he can do lead over.

Thank you

I would recommend getting Tab Pro or Guitar Pro. The two of you can download your favorite tabs and practice together and/or separately. If there are multiple guitars on a given song the software will split them accordingly. It allows you to focus only on lead, rhythm, solo, etc. Plus it lets you loop a particular section and/or slow it down. Really great if you're trying to build speed, especially when learning new technique.

Also, listen to the original song and especially watch video whenever possible. Youtube is great. Watch how other guitarists play. Watch how they apply bends, vibrato, harmonics, etc. Watch how they apply alternate and economy picking. These are all important techniques we strive to learn.

And if it's possible, hire a teacher. If not, there are online lessons all over the internet. Justinguitar.com is free and will keep you both busy for months, if not years.

Oh, and one more thing. If either you or your son have any desire to play in a band someday start learning theory. It will go a long way in helping you communicate with other musicians, not to mention help with improvisation and creativity.

Oh, and one more thing. If either you or your son have any desire to play in a band someday start learning theory. It will go a long way in helping you communicate with other musicians, not to mention help with improvisation and creativity.

Theory is important to learn, but it's been my experience that it doesn't always help you communicate with other musicians. For example, I play lead guitar in a group. I'm the only one who took lessons and knows theory. So, while it doesn't help me communicate the others, it does help me. So, if anything, learn theory for yourself - it can help to make you a better musician.

While that's a valid point, I'll also make the observation that it's the only thing he can play and if I played a chord progression on my guitar and asked him to play lead, he couldn't. In other words, he's learned to play something he saw on the screen - and play it well, but it's all he knows. Ask him to identify the note G on all 6 strings and he couldn't do it. Ask him to play a B pentatonic minor scale and he couldn't do it. Ask him to play an F# power chord and I doubt he could do it.

There's a difference between playing guitar and playing guitar.

Well, then, we seem to have fairly similar opinions on this.

It kind of depends on what you want to get out of guitar, too. I've got a friend who's even older than me by a couple of years (we both started really late). He's been working with a teacher for years and can do all the music theory stuff you're talking about. But he lacks the confidence to play with others, much less get up in front of a crowd. I'm self taught, haven't paid more attention to theory than I've needed to (I can read tabs and write songs, but have to think about it to know what key a song is in), but I've been having fun on stage and jam sessions for about half the time I've been playing (about 6 years).

I do agree that especially for some learning in their youth, the more versatile they are, the better.

I mainly picked up Rocksmith because I'd hit a plateau speed-wise with GP6 and wanted to get better with solos. It's been helpful, but I have a long way to go before I'm satisfied with my playing.

Back OT with the OP, I have a few suggestions:

From in the game:- Go With the Flow (I used to play this with my daughter out of UG Tabs and the official tab book a few years before Rocksmith came out) back when we were both starting on guitar- Just about anything else where the Chords (or Combo) track represents a rhythm guitar and the Single Note (or Combo) track represents a lead guitar

From the DLC:- The Avenged Sevenfold pack should be good once y'all get the chops for it- The Offspring pack should be accessible right away- Rock Hits 5 might have songs that would work for y'all, too.

Outside of Rocksmith:- Most Metallica works well with 2 guitars- QOTSA 3s and 7s- Arctic Monkeys

Oh yeah, I also second the sentiment of getting GP6, but TS has heard that from me before...

Good luck and have fun. He's going to grow up faster than you realize.